Kiwi swimmers get insight from some of the worlds best

Some of New Zealand’s leading swimmers have been getting an insight from the best overseas as they prepare for July’s 13th FINA World Championships.

Moss Burmester, Corney Swanepoel, Hayley Palmer and Andrew McMillan have ventured overseas as part of their preparations for the championships in Rome from 27 July to 2 August.

Burmester (International Training Centre) and McMillan (North Shore) are training under Denis Cotterell on the Gold Coast, Palmer has just returned from a stint with Grant Stoelwinder in Sydney while Swanepoel is with Brett Hawke in USA.

Hawke, an Australian, is one of the new wave of outstanding sprint coaches, now based in the USA. He was the national coach for Brazil at the Beijing Olympics where his swimmer Cesar Cielo won gold in the 50m freestyle.

Swanepoel showed immediate benefits when he finished third behind Michael Phelps at the US Swimming Grand Prix meet at Charlotte at the weekend, clocking 53.22 in the 100m butterfly final, a pleasing performance amidst his heavy training programme.

Cotterell is the renowned distance coach who guided Grant Hackett and Daniel Kowalski to glory. Burmester and McMillan also trained alongside a group of leading Chinese swimmers including a Beijing Olympic medallist at Cotterell’s Miami Pool on the Gold Coast.

The pair have been training outdoors grinding out up to 75 kms a week and yet maintaining good health, one of the benefits of training outdoors.

Stoelwinder is the man behind world record holding sprinters Libby Trickett and Eamon Sullivan and an invitation was extended to coach Scott Talbot and Palmer from NSW Institute of Swimming head Jim Fowlie.

Swimming New Zealand’s Jan Cameron said the opportunities for some of the swimmers to spend some time under top international coaches and alongside world champions was invaluable.

“The advantages are two-fold. It offers the chance to get some specific coaching from some of the world’s best coaches and training alongside some great swimmers to see how they train and therefore see what they have to do in order to become the best,” said Cameron, SNZ’s General Manager, Performance and Pathways.

“They are in a crunch period of training and the overseas experience gives them the opportunity to train for a short time in a new environment which really freshens them mentally.”

Palmer, who will compete in the 100m freestyle in Rome, said she and coach Talbot greatly benefitted from the experience under Stoelwinder.

“It was fantastic. They were really good in that you could talk to Libby Trickett about how she trains and how she approaches her events,” Palmer said. “She was very supportive and encouraging to me.

“I found that in general I was able to match them in straight line speed but Libby, especially, was outstanding in her turns and starts in particular. So I’ve learned about that and I am now working really hard on this”

The nine-strong team will compete in the Grand Prix in Melbourne next month before flying to Italy in mid-July with a final camp at Teramo before moving to Rome. Open water swimmer Alannah Jury will head to Europe in early July to prepare for her 10km event on 21 July with national coach and former open water legend Philip Rush.